Hubert Klumpner

Rapidly expanding megacities are a global phenomenon and as a consequence millions of people today live in makeshift constructs they call their homes. Venezuela is Latin America’s most urbanized country, and in the capital Caracas ”informal” cities grow at a dangerous speed up along the ridges of the city. High crime rates and bad sanitary conditions are only some of the problems here. These problems are seen from the point of view of architects and designers in this documentary, which shows inspirational examples of possibilities born when when visions meet reality. The film documents parts of the experimental project called Urban Think Tank, which has substituted drawing board studies with creating solutions in dialogue with the street level. ”In future city planning one has to free oneself from the toolbox of the past” is the architects’ answer to the issues of urbanisation.

Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, Bauhaus was supposed to unite sculpture, painting, design and architecture into a single combined constructive discipline. It is a synthesis of liberated imagination and stringent structure; cross-medial concepts that embellish and enrich our existence, illumination and clarity, order and playfulness. But Bauhaus was never just an artistic experiment. Confronted with the social conditions of that particular time, as well as the experience of WWI, the movement concerned itself with the political and social connotations of design from the very outset. Hence, Bauhaus history is not just the history of art, but also the history of an era that stretches from the early 20th century to the modern day.